Movies: Johan van der Keuken

It is an autobiographical fiction starring Ivens as an old man who has spent his life trying to "tame the wind and harness the sea" by capturing them on film....

"I am far away on a distant journey through my own city", filmmaker Johan van der Keuken says at the end of his four-hour portrait of Amsterdam. The city is presented as a place where people from all corners of the world live, who all exert their cul...

A poetic depiction of life and ritual in the south Indian state of Kerala. We see how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation: within the family, through the village economy, and especially from teachers to students. Performance footag...

Johan van der Keuken's first film is a uniquely beautiful portrait of Paris at dawn....

Johan van der Keuken: 'We kept the ends of a lot of shots in Amsterdam Global Village: the camera leaves the subject and pans to the sound woman, who quickly taps the microphone. These taps later in the cutting become the references for synchronising...

In the person of To Sang, a Chinese-born photographer living and working in Amsterdam, JVDK has found his perfect counterpart and alter ego. To Sang's monumental, stagey portrait photos reach back toward painting, just as JVDK's carefully composed fi...

The indomitable laughter of a radical. A collage. Third of four in a series for the VPRO....

Trying to describe oneself is a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and ...

In the late sixties, the American saxophone player and living jazz legend Ben Webster lived in Amsterdam for a year. Webster, who was born in Kansas City in 1909, was a unique personality in the world of jazz and blues. In the thirties, he played wit...

Johan van der Keuken went against the grain in 1980: from Amsterdam (on April 30 with the coronation riots and squatting actions) via Paris, southern France and Italy to Egypt. He made his personal travelogue in three parts for VPRO television. Later...

Face Value is a film combining a conscious approach with spontaneity, and contemplation with action. It presents us with the differing views of a region we call “Europe”, an imaginary Europe situated somewhere between London, Marseilles, Prague and t...

BEPPIE is a moving and disarming portrait of an Amsterdam street urchin. Van der Keuken once described her as follows: 'She was ten years old and the joy of the Achtergracht, where I was living at the time. An Amsterdam child, sweet and crooked as a ...

Documentary about the Wadden Sea in which Van der Keuken looks at this ribbon in the landscape through the eyes of a city-dweller. A film about the relationship between the minuscule and the overwhelming in this flat jungle....

Short documentary about the visual artist Shinkichi Tajiri (1923-2009). Second of four in a series for the VPRO....

Documentary shows brass bands from Nepal, Surinam, Indonesia and Ghana....

A 1958 French language short film written and directed by Costa-Gavras, starring Guy Mairesse, Paniaras and Jean Patrick....

With the use of montage sequences, voiced over with the observations of the children, van der Keuken was able to use artistic expression to portray the sightless children’s unique perspective of the world....

After the famous Dutch documentary filmmaker Johan van der Keuken is told that he has prostate cancer and only a few years left to live he decides to take an extended vacation while filming his journeys so the afterworld can learn about his experienc...

A short TV documentary about the making of Straub-Huillet's 'Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach'...

Johan van der Keuken explains, "Some fifteen filmmakers were asked to make a film series in a relay style for a very popular variety program on Dutch television: each new program was to start from the last image of the previous program, developing th...